Limitation Of Elephant Corridors and Rising Human Casualties: A Correlation in India

By Alex Arghya Adhikari

Bengaluru: According to a Human-Wildlife encounter report released by Rajya Sabha, 2,657 human casualties have taken place in the last 5 years due to Elephant Encounters in India.

This report comes to light after the death of a 47-year-old man by an Elephant which took place in Kerala this month. The wildlife-human conflict has been there for a long time and with the rise in human population, encroaching and expansion of human settlements to the lands which once were the natural habitats of the wild animals, there is no possible pause to this conflict shortly.

The report released by Rajya Sabha shows that Odisha (542) faced the highest number of human casualties because of Elephants in the past few years. Not only Odisha but also the neighboring states like Jharkhand and West Bengal also saw a high number of human casualties.

There are 33 Elephant Reserves across the whole country which come under the Project Elephant initiative which was launched in the year 1992 under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. The reason behind launching this project was to ensure the conservation of the Elephant species and their natural habitat. Also, to prevent and monitor illegal activities like hunting and poaching. It is because of Project Elephant, as of today’s date, India accounts for 60% of the global Elephant population. According to the 2017 Elephant Census, 29,914 Elephants are walking in the Indian forests.

Recently, the country has also registered 62 new Elephant corridors making the total number of corridors in the country 150.

The State of West Bengal with 26 corridors has the highest number of Elephant Corridors in the country. The East Central region ranks at the top with 52 corridors, followed by the North-East region with 48 corridors, Southern India with 32 corridors, and Northern India with 18 corridors ranking as the lowest. Elephant corridors can be referred to as sections of land that allow elephants to travel between two or more friendly habitats.

If one observes the casualty data and the corridor data, they would be able to find a correlation in between them.

Odisha and its neighboring states like Chhattisgarh, and West Bengal recorded a high number of casualties in the report. And when you look at the Corridor data, West Bengal has the highest number of corridors in the country with East-Central and North-East as the regions accounting for the majority of the corridors in the country. These same regions have also faced the highest number of human casualties due to Elephants in the last 5 years.

This tells us that the corridors that exist have been the victim of fragmentation because of encroachment, urban expansion, and human activities. These corridors which were once undisturbed and served as the natural habitat to the elephants have now been taken over by humans for agricultural, industrial and tourism purposes. People who live here or show movement around these areas assume that these regions belong to them but in reality, they belong to the wild animals and elephants. The elephants have this trait of migrating from one place to another depending upon their needs. The humans have come in their path of migration which has resulted in frequent encounters between both parties. And not only humans have faced casualties but also the animal too majorly because of getting electrocuted, poisoned and hit by a train.